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The UK's natural wealth getting ever more depleted

There was this great report on yesterday's Channel 4 News that encapsulated very concisely the awful state the ecology of the UK is in. Not a flattering background to the deeds of our end of life government. 
https://youtu.be/heXdRht-NrE?si=2rZici-JfycDeJeh
To Plant a Garden is to Believe in Tomorrow
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  • wild edgeswild edges Posts: 10,497
    pansyface said:
    Yeah, what the hell. Who cares?


    You can't blame poor Boris. Do you know how hard it is to find a decent public swimming pool these days? All our taxes had to be spent on legal fees for corrupt politicians and pointless vanity projects.

    If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
  • steveTusteveTu Posts: 3,219
    edited September 2023
    But it's odd isn't it? They were talking about this subject on Radio4 this morning and had commentary from the South Downs National Park - but failed to point out that that in itself (AFAIK - I'll google it, but I swear I was taught that the forests on the Downs were cleared by man) was itself man (Shaun) made a few thousand years ago from a forested landscape. Now we're trying to preserve a state that was man made in the first place.
    Don't all animals modify their environment by their living? It just seems to me that there are vastly too many of us trying to make the world support ever growing numbers.But we all want a place to live, clothes to wear, food to eat - and all the other accoutrements that go with human societies (pubs, schools, theatres, museums, roads, train tracks, airports....).


    UK - South Coast Retirement Campus (East)
  • LoxleyLoxley Posts: 5,698
    I didn't hear the piece but I'm sure the point is that farming practices have changed and biodiversity has been lost as a result, over the last 100 years. (Not all farmland is equal, is the point).
    "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour". 
  • wild edgeswild edges Posts: 10,497
    steveTu said:
    Now we're trying to preserve a state that was man made in the first place.
    Many works have been written on the subject of what we preserve or restore or rewild and how. I've yet to read two that agree. All we know for a fact is that we have the current baseline and things are projected to get worse. Restoring the country to some mythical point in history is as pointless as it is impossible. For one thing the climate in the future will be very different to the past and established invasive or colonising species will change the ecosystem from what it once was. The government is now legally bound to halt the decline of nature by 2030 and yet we're still at the rapid decline point for most species. Six years left and we're still polluting rivers and arguing about marine protection zones.

    If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
  • JennyJJennyJ Posts: 10,576
    steveTu said:
    .. It just seems to me that there are vastly too many of us trying to make the world support ever growing numbers....
    I agree, but I don't have a solution. You can't really stop people from having as many children as they want.

    Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
  • BenCottoBenCotto Posts: 4,718
    JennyJ said:
    steveTu said:
    .. It just seems to me that there are vastly too many of us trying to make the world support ever growing numbers....
    I agree, but I don't have a solution. You can't really stop people from having as many children as they want.

    Vastly too many of us might soon be a thing of the past as population declines. It is already going down in China, will be in Europe within a decade or so and world population will peak before this century is out. The counter issue is that though there will be fewer of us, rising living standards will mean more resource consumption.
    Rutland, England
  • The Republic of Ireland and Great Britain are equal in the same position and something tells me that conditions in our corner have changed. 
    Just yesterday, I read in a German newspaper about a studie checking the so-called Hallmann studie about the 75% loss of insects in 2017, https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185809 , finding that they hadn’t considered the impact of weather.  

    I my garden.

  • wild edgeswild edges Posts: 10,497
    The state of nature report is here https://stateofnature.org.uk/
    Sadly it doesn't cover the latest population declines in birds due to Avian Flu so the next report will have a very dire picture to show for that.
    If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
  • Hostafan1Hostafan1 Posts: 34,889
    JennyJ said:
    steveTu said:
    .. It just seems to me that there are vastly too many of us trying to make the world support ever growing numbers....
    I agree, but I don't have a solution. You can't really stop people from having as many children as they want.

    We can stop giving them child benefit 
    Devon.
  • JennyJJennyJ Posts: 10,576
    Didn't they try limiting it to the first two @Hostafan1 ? I don't have children so I never really followed the changes.
    Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
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